Zionsville, one of Indiana's best school districts, has hundreds of excellent teachers, without a single one evaluated as ineffective.

But, according to state data released Monday, so do Wayne and Decatur Township schools — both D-rated districts.

Even Indianapolis Public Schools, an F-rated district with a long history of struggling schools, recorded just five ineffective educators out of 2,600.

With these kinds of disparities in the first statewide report on teacher evaluation data, lawmakers and educators alike are wondering whether the state's patchwork of varying evaluation systems can really rate how effective Indiana's educators are.

How could so many teachers be doing so well when so many students are not?

But others say the data prove Indiana teachers are excelling in the classroom: Of the 55,000 educators in the report, about 60 percent of teachers earned "effective" grades in 2012-13 performance evaluations, according to the Indiana Department of Education. About 25 percent received the highest mark of "highly effective."

Just 2 percent of educators — including teachers, counselors, principals and superintendents — needed improvement, the data showed. Less than half of 1 percent fell into the lowest category of "ineffective."

About 10 percent were not evaluated for reasons that included resigning before the end of the school year.

"If nothing else, it confirms what most of us know and believe about our schools: that most of our educators are doing a very good job," said Indiana State Teachers Association President Teresa Meredith.

Still, in the same year that a tiny proportion of educators received low grades, about a quarter of Hoosier students flunked the ISTEP exam.

"There is a misalignment with how we're evaluating our teachers, if you think about student outcomes," said Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Lewis Ferebee. "Either we're not calibrated appropriately and not giving a true picture of teacher performance, or if we have teachers that are effective, we're not capitalizing on their expertise."

Takeover schools

Even the state's worst schools — IPS schools that have failed so many times that the state has taken them over — tally just a handful of ineffective teachers.

But takeover schools record far more struggling educators than other schools, and they claim none of the state's most effective teachers.

Even if it's less clear at the district level, a trend emerges from the evaluation data at the school level: Lower-performing schools tended to have fewer of the best teachers and more who needed to improve — a complicated if unsurprising correlation, experts said.

At Emma Donnan Middle School, one of the repeatedly failing schools taken over by the state, nearly half of the educators needed improvement.

But rather than linking subpar teachers to subpar school performance, one school official says takeover schools have more rigorous and demanding expectations for their educators.

"We need to be unapologetic in the fact that we're going to hold teachers to high standards and make sure we have the best teachers for these kids," said Keith Burke, principal at Howe High, where 19 of 45 educators rated "effective."

Still, it presents a jolting comparison to the sliver of educators statewide — not even 3 percent — who were in the lowest categories.

Indiana University education dean Gerardo Gonzalez pinned the link between teacher rating and school performance as perhaps the greatest question to arise from the state's data report.

"That's the kind of relationship we need to examine through research," he said. "You can't just make the assumption that because of correlation, you have causation."

What the data prove, Gonzalez said, is that Indiana's education system is not as broken as some believe.

"Teachers are being bashed," he said. "The very people that we depend on to improve what we're doing and do even better are being discouraged because of public statements and criticisms that clearly the data does not support."

Teacher evaluations, however, have often been criticized because so many educators have traditionally scored very well. A state study once showed 99 percent of Hoosier teachers rated effective, which some saw as unrealistic or, as then-state schools chief Tony Bennett put it, "statistically impossible."

Monday's report showing 87 percent of educators in the top-rated evaluation tiers brought up similar skepticism.

"I just find it hard to believe that number is as big as it appears to be," said state Rep. Robert Behning, the Indianapolis Republican who chairs the House Education Committee.

One problem, he and others suggested, is how evaluations are conducted.

Not only do districts use different systems, but principals may not receive enough training or time to evaluate their staffs, said David Dresslar, executive director of the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning at the University of Indianapolis.

"Principals are put in a very difficult position when they have to make high-stakes decisions in regards to teacher evaluations when they don't have the time," he said. "What are you going to default to? You're going to default to excellent. You're not going to have the kind of training and time to document 'improvement necessary' or 'ineffective.'"

When educators score low marks, they must work with school leaders on remediation plans. Jacob Pactor, an English teacher at Speedway High, sees that time commitment as another "disincentive" for principals to grade harshly.

"You are admitting you did a poor job of hiring," he said. "That's admitting you have not done your job as a principal."

At IPS, the mere five ineffective teachers among 2,600 educators has caused the superintendent to rethink its evaluation system.

"This is an opportunity, I believe," Ferebee said, "for us to recalibrate our performance management systems."

Differing approaches

But what makes an exceptional teacher in one district might not win a "highly effective" rating in another.

Few conclusions likely can be drawn from the state's aggregated data because districts use a mixture of evaluation models across the state.

In 2011, the Republican duo of Bennett and then-Gov. Mitch Daniels promoted an overhaul of teacher accountability, featuring a teacher evaluation system called RISE that was envisioned as a standard model for schools across the state.

But Bennett's Democratic successor, Glenda Ritz, has downplayed RISE and campaigned for more district autonomy in deciding evaluation systems.

Many school corporations rely on RISE or a modified version of RISE, but more than 60 districts have created their own systems.

"I do think that schools are beginning to tailor their evaluation models around what fits their needs," said state Rep. Kreg Battles, D-Vincennes. "I do see that as a positive."